Disposable history

From today’s editorials: The Albany Planning Board misses the larger picture in agreeing to the demolition of two downtown buildings.

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Come take a peek, Albany, at a city where the standard for historic preservation was just yanked up a notch. Come and imagine what the major thoroughfares of a city full of 19th-century buildings might look like after demolition becomes easier and old is no longer necessarily synonymous with historic.

It’s just fine with the city Planning Board if the Fort Orange Club wants to demolish the buildings it owns at 118 and 120 Washington Ave. to make way for a parking lot. Yes, a parking lot — to replace spaces lost to accommodate an expansion of the athletic facilities on the club’s property along Washington Avenue, a block from the Capitol.

“Being old does not, in and of itself, mean historic,” says Planning Board Chairman Raymond Joyce.

These buildings, which date back to the 1830s, aren’t grand structures. Understated, functional structures are more like it — in sharp contrast to the stately Fort Orange Club itself. Yet their very modesty is part of an urban fabric quite rich in history.

It’s also important to realize that these buildings, while old and needing repair, are not in the state of disrepair and outright dilapidation that could fairly describe literally hundreds of abandoned buildings across the city.

Renovating these buildings, to further brighten an urban landscape before it’s lost for good, has never been part of the argument here.

The Fort Orange Club’s contention that a parking lot, with attractive landscaping and fencing, would be more visually appealing than two buildings that are nearly 200 years old, was convincing enough for the Planning Board.

Yet the restraining order against demolition issued in state Supreme court last week is a perfect time to consider what might become of Albany if other buildings can come down as easily as the ones adjacent to the Fort Orange Club.

Oh, the club itself would endure. So, too, we would think, would the recently renovated Albany Institute of History & Art up the block and some of the other, older and sturdier structures that give the street its identity, eclectic as it is.

But what about the more ordinary buildings that the Planning Board might deem to be lacking in either charm, or historic and architectural value? What might come of them?

How many more parking lots, however meticulously designed, might go up in their place? Albany could come to miss the landscape that is has, imperfections and all.